Around Easter in 2014, I had an encounter of faith with Jesus Christ that completely shattered my life and created a seismic shift in my spiritual journey. I have documented this event and its aftermath elsewhere and will not be repeating that here. Since that time, I have undergone an excruciating but fruitfully liberating time of inner evolution and enlightenment. Excruciating because of the total replacement of my identity from Buddhist to Christian, and the upheavals that came with trying to fit into a religious box that never was fitting in the first place. Fruitfully liberating because I have come through that crazy period of social accommodation and personal repression wiser and more mature spiritually. I have come to a place of uncompromising spiritual authenticity, following a time of soul searching and shadow integration in a spirit of ruthless honesty.
Now, I no longer subscribe to many of the dogmas of religious Christianity. Nor do I believe in a monotheistic universe with an inherently existing, permanent, partless God who stands outside creation imposing his sovereignty over it in inscrutable ways. Of course, I admit that the existence of God is not proven or disproven, and is an issue that remains unresolved. But on the basis of available evidence, reason, and direct personal experience, I have come to believe that the monotheistic Christian religion with its God as commonly conceived is deeply flawed and severely oppressive with colonialist and imperialistic overtones as evidenced in western military and economic expansionist history. Thus, while I remain agnostic epistemically with regards to God’s existence, I do not believe that the Christian God as conceived by mainstream Christianity exists. In fact, I think that this psychopathological and dystopic idea of God, as I see it, is on balance more harmful than beneficial to humanity and sentient life as a whole.
What does that mean for my faith encounter with Jesus Christ? How do I understand Christ and salvation, especially in light of my breakthrough encounter during that fateful sabbatical meditation retreat some ten years ago? I shall attempt to articulate these issues in this essay. But first, a preamble to clarify certain presuppositions before launching into my current conception of the person-event and work of Jesus Christ.
No to scriptural inerrancy
First, I reject the dogma of scriptural inerrancy and all its underlying assumptions and implications for textual and doctrinal interpretation. I shall not accentuate this point as I have argued my case in some detail elsewhere. As such, I do not blindly accept literalist church-sanctioned readings of scripture and all their attendant dogmatic and doctrinal ramifications. This opens the way for me to read creatively and hermeneutically in the dialogical space of contemplative experience spanning the reader and the text.
Excluding exclusivism
Secondly, I reject the exclusivist and chauvinistic approach of mainline Christianity (as I have experienced it) particularly its evangelical variants with regards to the veracity, significance, and place of other religions and spiritualities. In particular, I reject the one-upmanship of Christian assertions of Christ over and above other revered pioneers of world spiritualities such as the Buddha and Mahavira, Laozi and Zhuangzi, Shiva and Krishna, to name a few. That said, do I admit of the uniqueness and particularity of Jesus in a way that none of the other spiritual figures could compare? Yes, I do. But do I see Jesus as superior to all others in an inherent sense? No, not at all. Jesus is utterly unique. But so is the Buddha. And Shiva. To me, such judgements of superiority and inferiority are part of a neurotic psychological complex that sadly haunts immature minds. As I see it, there is simply no place for such neuroticism in my present framework of spirituality.
Myth of omnipotence
Thirdly, I do not believe that God is omnipotent or all-powerfully sovereign over every historical happening and personal minutiae of human life. In a previous essay, I have argued against the viability and veracity of a triple-omni God, that is a God deemed as omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent. I shall not repeat those arguments here. One of these three attributes would have to go in order for the monotheistic God to have some kind of viability. Even then, the plausibility of such a God, that is a double-omni God, remains weak as far as evidential, moral, and rational grounds go. Logically and morally speaking, it is hard to imagine an all-knowing and all-loving God doing so little to intervene in the travails, anguish, and suffering of humanity over so many millennia, despite being not all-powerful. Omnipotence aside, one wonders whether a weak and powerless God despite having all goodness and knowledge is really a God worthy of human supplication and worship on bended knees.
Judicial cosmos is uninhabitable
Fourthly, I have no time for a judicially moralistic and legalistic universe that answers to the whims and fancies of a judicially punitive and bloodthirsty God. Biblically ascribed notions of severe cosmic penalty and capital punishment for human sins, substitutionary atonement by a blameless man for the purpose of sin erasure, God’s incessant need for sacrificial blood offerings as means of sin covering or redemption, and divine righteousness and justice as unquestionable alibi for not eradicating suffering completely yesterday are some of the most incredulous ideas that baffle the human imagination, revolting the moral sensibilities of the human heart at least for me. Contra biblical fundamentalism, I reject unequivocally these dogmas of literalist scriptural readings that initially coloured my view of God and his salvific work. In line with my rejection of scriptural inerrancy and infallibility, and critical interrogation of Euro-Americocentric church tradition, I am opting for a new cosmotheology that better articulates a God who makes sense and is worthy of human adoration and worship, love and surrender. I wish to stress that fear of moral accountability is not the issue here. The real issue is moral and intellectual credibility. The question is: what would make for a God that has moral and intellectual credibility as per everyday common sense and a personal if not relatively consensual sense of moral decency?
Middle way beyond extremes
Fifthly, I veer away from the ontological extremes of substantialism and nihilism as well as eternalism and annihilationism, to adopt a “middle-way” perspective of contextual nominalism. This is not a mere act of belief or presupposition but a result of deep ontological probe and rigorous analysis, in the light of empirical observation. In my book The Christ-Awakened Life: Meditation Beyond Boundaries and an earlier scholarly essay in the Journal of Reformed Theology, I argued for a qualified nominalist formulation of the Trinitarian God. Here, I take a further step to argue for a full nominalist and contextual understanding of God even as my own thinking has evolved and matured. To my mind, there is nothing that is not empty of inherent existence, independent of conceptual framework and system of measurement. Up until the recent past, I have left the terrain of the Trinity untouched by full contextual nominalism and seen the Triune God as empty yet ineffably existent from its own side. Now, I no longer see that position as tenable, even as my direct contemplative experience and critical reflexivity have evolved into new horizons.
(a) Dependent designation
In a contextual nominalist vision of reality, there is nothing that is not dependently designated upon a valid basis by way of a consensually derived conceptual framework and system of measurement. This applies equally to all persons and phenomena, including the persons of the Trinity and the very notions of relationality and relationship themselves. To say that God in his three persons each has ineffable existence from their own side is in effect to assent to a subtle form of essentialism. This is overstretching the limits of language and conception to assert an ontological essence that can never be proven or validated. It betrays a deeply ingrained mental tendency to grasp onto real existence, clinging to a view of reality that espouses and sanctions such a tendency. This grasping at an essential self and clinging to its view is the deepest root of all suffering and anguish. In other words, such a qualified nominalist view of reality remains entrapped in the causal process of suffering and thus is not indicative of genuine and total freedom.
(b) Examples of dependent arising
In the full contextual nominalist vision, God seen as a singular entity is empty of inherent existence and entirely dependent upon conceptual designation within a conceptual framework and measuring consciousness that establish it. Similarly for the three persons of the Godhead — Father, Son, and Spirit — where each person is empty of inherent existence, equally dependent upon conceptual designation within a conceptual framework and the measuring consciousness that establishes them. Every person and phenomenon is empty of inherency by way of their dependency on causes and conditions, composite parts, and conceptual designation on a valid basis.
An instance of the first type of dependency is seen in the apple seed (cause) receiving sufficient sunlight, moisture, and nourishment (conditions) to give rise to the apple fruit (phenomenon). In the case of a person, the fertilized embryo (cause) and mindstream (cause) in conjunction with a myriad of conditions such as adequate gestation, nutrition, temperature, safe environment, and more to give rise to a person being born from the womb. An instance of the second type of dependency is seen in roots, stem, leaves, petals, stamens, and stigma making up the parts of a flower. As for persons, a human person is composed of cells, tissues, organs, and body parts together with a mindstream of aggregated events such as sensation, perception, emotion, intention, and cognizance in dynamic interplay.
As for the third and subtlest type of dependency, a phenomenon such as a car is not merely an assemblage of car parts (composition) and metals or rubber or plastic materials assembled in a factory (causes and conditions) but emerges into being at the moment when the label and idea “car” is designated on the assembled whole. Similarly for a person. A person is a label and idea designated or imputed on the conglomeration of physical body parts and mental aggregates in concert with all its activities.
(c) Even ineffability hides inherency
In all these cases, the coming into being of any person or phenomenon is contingent on the conceptual consciousness that designates with its conceptual-linguistic framework (e.g. Newtonian physics and English semantics) and measures with its system of measurement (e.g. gross sensory perception). This is the case for all persons and phenomena in the cosmos and is the case for God as well. In the case of God, to say that God is ineffably real though partially dependent on conceptual designation is tantamount to saying that God inherently exists. As shown earlier, any remnant of any phenomenon that is not conceptually imputed remains an instance of inherent existence no matter how we contrive it in terms of “ineffability.” Inherent existence means permanence in terms of unchanging-ness. An inherent unchanging God can never act in anyway or relate to anything or anyone, not even to itself. For action implies change. So does relationality, as relationship between entities necessitates action on the part of each. Any trace of inherency by logical necessity negates relationality. As for God, so it is for the three persons of the Godhead.
I have shown in my book that inherently existing persons cannot be viable and relate to one another in any way. If the personhood of Father, Son, and Spirit is inherently real, we end up with three Gods and not one. For inherency means strict and rigid demarcation between one thing and another. There is no room for permeability and fluidity, and thus no scope for nonduality of being. Hence, if Godhead’s three persons are ineffably real though dependent on conceptual designation in part, there remains a trace of inherent existence in each person. This trace of inherency negates the viability and relationality of the three persons in the one God. And if so, the Triune God collapses into an unsalvageable ontological heap that makes no sense.
(d) Single taste of luminous emptiness
In the final analysis, the one God in three persons can only be if and only if both God and the three persons are empty of inherent existence through and through — completely contingent on conceptual designation and sharing in the one taste of emptiness with all persons and phenomenon without exception. Yet not existing as inherent entities does not mean not existing at all. Conventionally, everything exists and God exists but not as they appear to exist, inherently. Appearing to exist inherently is a falsity that is debunked by analytical and contemplative penetration, thus revealing how phenomena and persons truly exist — as nominally imputed phenomena and persons. The three-one God is still there, but as contextually and nominally real. The imagined boundary between God and creation melts into a boundless open expanse of dazzling emptiness. It is an emptiness that allows for all relativities to exist nominally.
Bedrock of immaculate experience
Finally, by temperament and inclination, I lean towards an empirical agnostic vision of God and prefer to remain silent and unknowing as to the ultimate reality of such a being. But for the purpose of everyday discourse, I consciously choose to construct a theo-cosmology in which my vision of God challenges and transcends mainstream Christian thinking on the same, taking a leaf out of Asian philosophical cosmologies of the divine that evince far greater intellectual sophistication, moral sensibility, and empirical substantiation than the Christian worldview. As you will see, I do not equate Christ with the Greco-Roman western religious institution and theology that have grown out of the early Middle Eastern soil. Nor do I subscribe to theological indoctrination as a way of knowing the real. Rather, I return to experience, immediate and direct, as the touchstone for my intellectual construction of what is real and divine. A cosmology worth its salt must inevitably rest on the bedrock of empirical observation and direct immediate self-authenticating experience. It is my assertion that rigorously honed contemplative technology (attentional balance) and science (deep ontological insight) are the best means of knowing the real and the divine that we can access as conscious human beings.
^ For a longer and complete version of this essay, delving into detailed discussion on how I reframe my faith encounter experience of Christ in light of current contemplative and cosmological insights, write to me to request a copy of Awarezen's newly launched periodical Mountain Rain (2024 Issue 1).
Image credit: Pexels.
